Inside the Minds of Ghosters

A study reveals interesting information about the inner workings of ghosters.

Reviewed by Davia Sills

Key points

• Ghosters often report that they ghosted because they did not want to hurt others' feelings.
• Ghosting triggers ambiguous loss, a complicated form of grief that occurs when people don’t get closure.
• There are ways someone can get through a ghosting experience, even if closure never comes.

This post was co-authored by Marisa G. Franco, Ph.D., and Victoria Gillison.

For Jaelyn, now 28, it happened overnight. One day, she was graduating high school with a tight-knit group of friends she grew up with. The next day, all, except one, cut off communication.

In Morgan’s case, it happened two years ago, right after her best friend’s wedding. Chloe, 25, still feels a bit of the sting. She had a friend she talked to almost every day—then, suddenly, radio silence. Texts went unanswered, she was out of the close friends’ list on Instagram, and then she was unfollowed altogether.

These women, and all of us who have been ghosted, have been left to wonder: Why do people ghost? And are ghosts as cold as they seem?

Why Do People Ghost?

Annah, 24, remembers “feeling overwhelmed with the issues that [her friend] was facing.” Today, Annah acknowledges that she herself was depressed, but at the time, “I had my own problems and issues, and I felt as though I wasn’t able to express that to her because I didn’t want to put more on her plate. I didn’t want her to think that she’s too much because I’ve been in that position before. Instead, I just put her and our friendship on the back burner.”

Wait, what? Annah ghosted out of a desire to be kind?

And she’s not the only one. When people wrote about being ghosted on or ghosting someone, ghosters endorsed that they ghosted because they did not want to hurt the ghostee’s feelings or make them feel rejected (Experiment 4). They even reported moderate levels of care for the ghostee. And yet, ghostees, reflecting on being ghosted, underestimated the ghoster’s care and underestimated the degree to which ghosters ghosted them to protect them from feeling rejected.

In another part of the study (Experiment 7), ghosters imagined wanting to reject a new friend because they were fundamentally incompatible. In this situation, the more reluctant ghosters were to hurt feelings, the more likely they reported being to ghost.

Ambiguous Loss

Even as ghosters think it’s kinder to ghost than it is to share why they’re pulling away, ghostees don’t feel better when ghosted. In fact, ghostees felt more cared for when they imagined getting directly rejected (i.e., we aren’t compatible) than when they were ghosted (Experiment 8).

Ghosting triggers ambiguous loss, a complicated form of grief that occurs when we don’t get closure as to why a relationship ended. Even two years later, Morgan still has this grief: “I’m still very confused, and I don’t really know what happened. I’m racking my brain trying to figure out what happened.” Chloe also found herself looking for answers afterward, sharing that “I feel like you’re not going to ghost somebody for no reason, so what hurt was realizing [she] would rather terminate ties with me than address whatever it was that you were feeling. It made me feel like I wasn’t important enough to you. This relationship wasn’t important enough.”

Getting Over Ghosting

There are ways to find peace after you’ve been ghosted.

1. Ask for Clarity.

If ghosters care about us more than we think, then they also may be more likely to offer clarity than we think they are. Try: “Hey. I haven’t heard from you in a while, and I’m feeling bummed. Just wanted to check in. If there’s something on your mind you’ve been wanting to communicate, I’d love to hear it.”

2. Reframe the Experience.

What if ghosting is more about the ghoster’s comfort level with conflict than anything you did wrong? Remember that they may be struggling with their own emotions or trying to avoid a tough conversation. Ask yourself, “What if this experience has nothing to do with me?”

3. Find the Offering.

Ask yourself what you learned from the friendship. If you’ve ever felt the ambiguous loss that comes with ghosting, you may now know, for example, how much you value good communication. Thus, you now know what to prioritize in a friend.

4. Grieve Without Closure.

While knowing why a relationship ended may facilitate the grieving process, you can still grieve without closure. Instead of revisiting the relationship and wondering what you did to get ghosted, accept that you will never know—and that you can be OK not knowing. Sometimes, grieving involves getting answers. Sometimes it involves accepting that there’ll never be any.